DOCUMENT
Variations on the Mortara Case in
Midnineteenth-Century New Orleans
Mark K. Bauman
During the midnineteenth century three major international
incidents galvanized American Jewry and pushed it toward unified
action. In 1840, with the instigation of the French consul, Jews in
Damascus were charged with murdering a Capuchin monk and his
servant to use their blood for making Passover matzoth. A number
of Jews were jailed, some of whom underwent torture and died.
Jews, recognizing an identity that transcended national boundaries,
protested in many American cities as well as in Great Britain and
France. President Martin Van Buren expressed his disgust at this
antisemitic blood libel through foreign policy channels. Following
the second incident, Van Buren’s two successors in the presidency
negotiated a trade treaty with Switzerland. Jews were excluded from
much of that country, and the treaty allowed the cantons to reject visas
to Jewish American citizens. A delegation of Jews requested that James
Buchanan revise the treaty, but to no avail.1
The most important event for American Jewry occurred in Bologna
in 1858. On the basis of canon law established by Pope Benedict XIV
a century earlier, the Italian police took six-year-old Edgardo Mortara
from his parents. They did so based on the testimony of a family
servant, Anna Morisi, who claimed that she had baptized the Jewish
boy to save his soul when she feared that he, while still an infant,
was about to die from an illness. In spite of international protest, the
kidnapped child received a Catholic education and became a priest.
Again the Buchanan administration refused to intervene when lobbied
by American Jews.
Given the prevalent friction over distinctions based on national
origin and religious practices, prior attempts at unity instigated
especially by Isaac Leeser had failed.2 Now cognizant that similar
incidents were bound to occur and that a unified response would be
most effective, representatives of various congregations established the
Variations on the Mortara Case in Midnineteenth-Century New Orleans • 43
Board of Delegates of American Israelites. Persecution accomplished
what American freedom and voluntarism had discouraged. The
Board of Delegates, representing lay leadership rather than rabbinical
authority, attempted to encourage unity by recommending educational
improvements, collecting demographic data concerning American
Jewry, and making more rational the provision of charity. It also
collected funds and attempted to influence public opinion.3
In his study of the Mortara incident, the late Bertram W. Korn
indicates that the American Jewish response to the incident reflected
a lack of unity and the “inexperienced fumbling which characterized
most Jewish leaders,” as well as the willingness of American Jews
to voice their opinions, the association of American Jews with Jews
in need overseas, and the belief of American Jewry that it had the
equality and liberty to protest, petition government, and appeal to
fellow Americans for aid.4 Thus the Mortara case illustrated both the
strengths and weaknesses of midcentury Jewry in the United States.
Korn places the incident squarely within the political and sectional
debates of the era, and he explains how various interest groups used
it to their advantage and reacted to it within these frameworks. In
so doing, he emphasizes the impact of slavery and sectionalism on
southern Jewish reactions. In essence,
Jews in the South were less willing to
protest openly and expressed greater
agreement with Buchanan’s equivocal
position than Jews elsewhere.
In Charleston, South Carolina,
Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans,
Louisiana, for example, the Jewish
communities did not report their
protest activities in local newspapers,5
and they tended to support Buchanan’s
position of limited national power and
states’ rights. Like Buchanan, southern
Jews supported the Democratic
Party and were reluctant to have the
American government criticize a
Rabbi James K. Gutheim (1817-1886)
(Courtesy American Jewish Archives)
44 • American Jewish Archives Journal
foreign country’s position on the civil rights of its citizens when they,
and the United States, were vulnerable to a similar rebuff over the issue
of slavery.
At the 1859 annual banquet of the Jewish Widows and Orphans
Homes of New Orleans, Korn explains, four speakers including D.
C. Labatt, Henry M. Hyams, and Benjamin F. Jonas, praised the
positions of Buchanan and Secretary of State Lewis Cass. Rabbi James
K. Gutheim chaired the meeting. These men were among the most
politically connected and influential Jews in the community. They were
all also future supporters of the Confederacy.
Gutheim became an ardent Confederate and fled New Orleans
during the war to avoid giving an oath of loyalty to the Union. A
successful attorney and plantation owner like his cousin Judah P.
Benjamin, whom he accompanied from Charleston to New Orleans
in 1828, Hyams served as Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana during
the Civil War. He was the first Jew elected to such a position. Owner
of dozens of slaves, he had actively opposed abolitionist agitation
beginning in the 1830s. Hyams and Benjamin Jonas were law partners.
Jonas’s family illustrated the vicissitudes of geography, the divisions
wrought by the war, and the countervailing unifying influence of
blood and religious identity. Those of his brothers who were raised in
Kentucky served in the Confederacy and those raised in Illinois did
their part for the Union. His father, Abraham Jonas, was an attorney, a
Kentucky and Illinois legislator, postmaster of Quincy, and friend and
political supporter of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Jonas helped found
the Illinois Republican Party, and Benjamin Jonas became a legislative
leader of the Louisiana Redemption movement and the first observant
Jewish United States Senator. While Benjamin participated in the
protest over Mortara in Louisiana, Abraham urged Senator Lyman
Trumbull to introduce a Mortara resolution in the Senate, according to
Korn, as a political ploy to help the Republican Party in 1860.6
Korn recognized that the Mortara baptism and kidnapping were
not isolated events. In 1826, for example, a young Jewish woman
was forced into a convent, and during the 1840s a Jewish child was
“separated,” as the Catholic Church described it, from his parents.
Both of these incidents occurred in Italy but did not result in
Variations on the Mortara Case in Midnineteenth-Century New Orleans • 45
protest, because Italian Jews had not been free to protest prior to the
unification of that country. In St Louis, Missouri, Captain Paulson
Dietrich, a Jew, was baptized without his consent as he lay dying in
the Sisters of Charity Infirmary. A fellow Jewish patient reported the
incident to the president of the local congregation who intervened.
The priest in charge of the infirmary refused to discuss the situation or
to allow visitors to see Dietrich, and appeals to Archbishop Kendrick
were denied. The church buried the young man in a Catholic cemetery,
although official action resulted in his disinterment and reburial in a
Jewish cemetery.7
Korn did not realize that a similar incident to the Mortara case
took place in New Orleans almost simultaneously, and that this
incident and its outcome reflected the positions taken by southern
leaders to the more publicized international event. This case related
to a young Jewish girl who was orphaned; it involved the French
government, did not require national or international protest, and had
a decidedly different outcome.
Context
The New Orleans Association for the Relief of Jewish Widows and
Orphans was the key agency involved in this incident, and its leaders
were those who framed the community response to the Mortara case.
In 1854 twenty-one “gentlemen” created this organization, the first
Jewish orphanage in the country, under the leadership of Gershom
Kursheedt.8 Obtaining a state charter the next year, the men referred
to themselves as “Israelites.” Following the flowery language of the era,
the preamble of the society’s constitution waxed poetic:
Within the compass of humanity there is nothing which touches more
powerfully the heart of the true Philanthropist, than the destitute,
forlorn condition of the poor widow and orphan Bereft of their nautal
Protector, exposed to the merciless sufferings of a selfish World – the
one, with the fine Sensibilities of her Sex, cramped in her executions
to secure a maintenance – the other, with powers and capacities yet
undeveloped, tossed about by the fierce waves of privation and hunger,
and unguided impulse, they represent the Strongest claims to the
Sympathies of the good and benevolent.9
Although this statement reflected the nineteenth-century
perceptions of the roles of men and women in society in a
46 • American Jewish Archives Journal
condescending fashion, in reality the frequent yellow fever epidemics
and particularly those of 1847 and 1853 in the Mississippi area created
the demand for assistance. The preamble referred to the provision of
such assistance to be a Jewish religious responsibility. It noted that the
Jewish population of New Orleans was increasing dramatically, that
many of the newcomers died while they became acclimated, and that
the current Jewish charities could not meet demands.10
According to the by-laws, a matron directly responsible to the
male board “shall be charged with the domestic economy of the Home
and regarded as head of the household.” The men held the power but
recognized the woman’s role over daily governance. The committee on
applications for relief gave the board reports documenting “the merits
of every applicant after due and careful investigation,” as well as the
“character of employment best adopted to each applicant.”11 These and
other policies were in keeping with the nineteenth-century view of
charity. Recipients, in this case the “inmates,” had to demonstrate their
worthiness and were subject to intense control.
Individuals from throughout the South joined the association, and
contributions were received from as far away as Philadelphia. As in
the Mortara case, the provision of assistance to fellow Jews overcame
all other divisions. Nonetheless, subscriptions to a building fund were
insufficient, and loans and a subsidy from the Louisiana legislature
had to be solicited. The donation from the legislature, requested by
David C. Labatt, one of the speakers Korn identified, was particularly
welcomed in that it represented the honor and esteem in which
Jews were held by the Christian community of Louisiana. It also
reflected the willingness of the New Orleans leadership to solicit state
government aid and to become visible even when such visibility might
be negatively construed.12
By April 1856, the association erected “a Home for the unfortunate
of our race.” The following year a primary school and domestic
economy program were added, and President M. M. Simpson reported
that “beneath this roof may be found the aged friendless spinster…
whose sole aim in life is to go hence in peace… the aged matron with
widowed heart still clinging to the past.” Yet all was not well. Simpson
continued: “Perhaps in this particular [general discipline], more than
all other, combined, has the forebearance and sagacity of the Board
Variations on the Mortara Case in Midnineteenth-Century New Orleans • 47
been tested.” To overcome the problem, “industrial pursuits” were to
be expanded. “From profitable employment among the Adults, it is
confidently hoped, the seeds of cheerfulness will spring; it will relieve
a sense of dependence too keenly alive, and render all more subservient
to the rules and regulations.”13
The Case of Alice Levy
Five months after Edgardo Mortara was abducted, Joseph Simon,
chair of the application committee, applied for Alice Levy’s acceptance
into the Home. A resolution passed unanimously accepting the
child “in obedience to the dying injunction of the Mother,” and to
inform Mr. and Mrs. Capdeville that the Home was “prepared to
receive child at once.” M. M. Simpson presided, Gutheim served as
secretary, and Labatt participated as a board member. The decision
was made December 26, 1858, a date important because of its relation
to the Mortara protests. President Solomon Cohen of Savannah’s
Mickve Israel wrote to Buchanan on November 17, urging the
president to exert moral influence on the papacy. On the following
day, delegates of twelve New York synagogues met to plan concerted
actions. Representatives of New Orleans’s congregations did the same
on December 12, with Gutheim as chair, and passed resolutions
condemning papal policy and agreeing to work with other American
synagogues if a convention was called for such a purpose. Shaarai
Shomayim of Mobile acted similarly on December 19. The next day
representatives of five Philadelphia congregations appealed to Cass.14
Thus the Levy case unfolded at the same time that Jews in New
Orleans and throughout the country were enmeshed in lobbying on
behalf of Mortara.
Simon officially delivered Alice Levy to the Home on January
2, 1859, two days before Buchanan wrote his first and only direct
response to the Mortara case. The monthly board minutes indicate that
“Mrs. Capdeville had acted a very kind and charitable part towards
said orphan” and that a motion was passed to thank her “for the kind
care she has bestowed on the said child, activated by motives of true
charity and benevolence.” The Capdevilles were invited to the society’s
“next anniversary celebration… as a slight token of our esteem.” This
was the meeting to which Korn referred, at which society officers paid
48 • American Jewish Archives Journal
tribute to President Buchanan. The association also allocated twentyfive dollars “to be paid to Mrs. Francois, the guardian nurse of the
orphan child Alice.”15
Thus far Alice Levy’s situation could only be viewed as unusual
in the recognition given to the Capdevilles and the seemingly positive
contribution to the nurse. Yet later in the same minutes the following
appears: “The President [M.M. Simpson] states that the French Consul
Count de Mejan had officially enquired concerning the orphan Alice
Mortara Levy, at the instance of the French government. On motion it
was resolved that the Secy. furnish him with a statement of the case.”
Although a copy of Simpson’s letter could not be located, the
consul’s response and subsequent correspondence explicate
the incident:
Consulate of France at New Orleans
New Orleans, March 16, 1859
Mr. President,
His Excellency, the minister of Foreign Affairs of His Majesty, the
Emperor Napolean, has done me the honor of writing me, under the
date of the 9th February last, for the purpose of calling my attention
to the facts concerning a young orphan girl, Alice Levy, daughter of
French parents, who had been delivered to a charitable woman of New
Orleans, for the object of being raised in the Catholic religion, contrary
to the last disposition of her mother, who had expressed the desire that
her child be raised in the bosom of the Jewish religion, which was that
of her parents. Attached to this communication were several papers,
and among others, a letter of the grand-mother of this young girl,
Madame Widow Meyer Lichtenberg, nee Levy, who stated, that the
delivery of said child had been refused by the Jewish Society of New
Orleans, because it had already been baptized.16
His Excellency, the Count Walewsky,17 has given me the order to use
my influence and, if necessary, take legal steps, in order to realize the
wishes of the deceased Mrs. Levy.
According to the information which I have gathered, this intervention
has become unnecessary, since the said child has been, after some
prudent considerations (après quelques discretions), entrusted to the
good care of the Jewish Society.
Variations on the Mortara Case in Midnineteenth-Century New Orleans • 49
This information, however, can not fully satisfy me. I therefore believe
that I cannot do better than to address myself to you, Sir, as the
president of the association and of the Jewish Asylum, and to beg of
you to let me know the result of the intervention, in order that I may
act accordingly, and transmit an answer to His Excellency, the Minister
of Foreign Affairs.
Please accept, Mr. President, the assurance of my high consideration.
The Consul of France
(Sig.) Cte [Count] Mèjan
Mr. Simpson
President of the Society for the care of Israelite widows and orphans of
New Orleans18
Although the attachments including the grandmother’s letter could
not be located, Simpson’s response followed directly in the minutes of
March 15, 1859:
New Orleans March 19th, 1859
Cte [Count] Mejan
Consul of France at New Orleans
Respected Sir,
In compliance with your request, on behalf of your government, I have
the honor to communicate to you the desired information, regarding
the orphan child, Alice Levy.
Mrs. Levy, the mother of said child, died in the early part of September
last. During her sickness she was attended by Israelites and on her
demise she was buried with the Jewish rites in a Jewish cemetery. Prior
to her death she expressed a desire to have orphan child Alice, then
about 16 mos. old, placed in the Jewish Widows and Orphans’ Home.
The nurse having charge of said child pleaded, that she was much
attached to it and asked permission, to keep it about a week longer,
when she would deliver it to the custody of the Home. She, however,
did not keep her promise, and her residence being unknown, some time
elapsed, before the where about of the child could be discovered.
It then appeared, that the nurse had meanwhile applied to Mrs.
Capdeville and represented to this Lady, that the said orphan had been
abandoned and was without protection. Mrs Capdeville thereupon
50 • American Jewish Archives Journal
made suitable provision for the maintenance of the child and had it
baptized in the Catholic religion.
It is conceded, that this estimable Lady acted from purely charitable
motives and, what appeared to her, a sense of duty. For, altho’ she
refused to give up the child, when first demanded by the chairman of
our Com[mitt]ee. On Application and Relief – yet when called upon
by the undersigned, to surrender said orphan to its legitimate guardian,
she complied with the demand and regretted the circumstances that
had placed her in so unpleasant an attitude.
The said orphan has been an inmate of our Institution since the 28th of
December last. In common with other Jewish orphans, it will enjoy the
benefits of our Asylum, and special care will be taken to raise it in the
religious faith of its parents.
The accompanying copy of the Constitution and By-Laws governing
the Home will afford an adequate idea of the character and objects of
our Institution.
In communicating the details of this affair permit me to add, that it
is a source of peculiar gratification to the Israelites of this country, to
witness, at this juncture, the prompt intervention of your Government
in a case so similar to that of the Italian child Mortara, for whose
parents there seems to be no prospect of relief. It is an earnest of
that firm and enlightened policy, which has won for his majesty, the
Emperor of France, the respect and admiration of the whole world. It
presents the magnificent spectacle of an enlightened government of a
powerful nation listening to the plaints of one of its humblest citizens
and stepping forward to vindicate the sacred right; to worship God
according to the dictates of one’s own conscience. And I am fully
persuaded, that this act will elicit from all Israelites, the most fervent
prayers after the welfare of France and her august Ruler, and the
kindest regards for your self.
Please accept, Sir, the expression of my high consideration and esteem,
in subscribing myself,
Your obedt. servant
(Sig) M.M. Simpson
The Levy and Mortara Cases Come Together
The France of Napolean III was clearly not identical to the Papal
States under Pius IX. Both the government and people of France
Variations on the Mortara Case in Midnineteenth-Century New Orleans • 51
had protested vociferously even before Americans became aware and
involved in the Mortara case. Korn suggests that the Mortara incident
weakened the alliance between the papacy and Empire, although
Napolean was not yet prepared to withdraw his troops and thereby
break completely with the pope. As in America, French Jewry unified
through the Alliance Israélite Universalle, “the only permanent result”
of the incident in Europe. Paradoxically, when Mortara feared that
Italian unification and control of the Papal States would result in
his return to his parents, he fled to France to be able to practice his
Catholic faith freely.19
The Widows and Orphans Home Board did circulate information
about the Levy incident nationally. The February 1858 issue of Isaac
Leeser’s the Occident and American Jewish Advocate included a report
on the January 9, 1858 anniversary dinner meeting of the society
amidst heavy coverage of the Mortara case. The report noted:
By-the-by we must mention a circumstance which transpired lately in
connection with the Home. An infant, left motherless, was entrusted
to a nurse. She took the child and gave it to a Catholic lady who had
it baptized, and when the thing was discovered refused first to yield
the baby to its kind and religious protectors, we mean the ladies of
the Home, who had taken it in charge. But as New Orleans is not in
the Roman States, the zealot had to yield up her surreptitious convert,
and the child was thus restored to its friends and Judaism. Henceforth
no child will be left out to nurse outside of the Home. Let our readers
mark this! And then say whether the efforts made in the Mortara case
are not based on a deep and holy principle; and still there are some who
appear indifferent to this dreadful violation of human rights.20
The next issue of the paper listed actions and resolutions from
across the country on behalf of Mortara, including those from Mobile
and New Orleans. James K. Gutheim chaired the joint committee
organized by the New Orleans congregations that met on December
12, and M. M. Simpson served as secretary. On April 28, 1859,
The Occident and American Jewish Advocate printed the fourth annual
report of the association given at the March 12 meeting. Part
of Simpson’s remarks described the case alluding directly to the
Mortara incident:
I cannot close this Report without referring to an interesting
circumstance, which forms an incident of the epidemic of 1858 in
52 • American Jewish Archives Journal
our city. The subjoined correspondence [between he and Mèjan],
which I have the honor to submit, will furnish a correct account of
the proceedings connected with this affair. The prompt action of the
French Government to redress the grievance of one of its humblest
citizens, is an evidence of its wise and liberal policy and a signal tribute
to the humanity of the age.
The child of Mortara is lingering a prisoner of His Holiness the Pope:
the afflicted parents mourn his loss as one gone forever. But the age is
not one of silence. Incidents such as that related below, of recent date in
our community, must tend to strengthen the arm of justice and avenge
“the deep damnation of his taking off.”
On April 29, 1859, Isaac M. Wise’s The Israelite reprinted the
exchange of letters between Count Mèjan and M. M. Simpson under
the headline, “No Mortara Case,” without Simpson’s full report. By
advertising the case, the association was giving credit to the French
government and, thus, further admonishing the Papal authorities by
placing their actions in contrast.
Beyond Sectionalism
What lessons are to be learned from the Levy incident? Apparently
the Papal policy of recognizing coercive conversion of Jews by
individual lay people was well known, and its implementation
extended beyond the infamous Mortara case. Conversely, some
Catholics exemplified by the Capdevilles and French officials rejected
the practice. Private American citizens acting independently of the
United States government could effectively intervene even with foreign
governments. Thus practical experience at least partly supported the
position of those Jewish leaders who accepted Buchanan’s arguments.
Although Korn emphasized regional distinctions concerning
responses to the Mortara case, what is more striking is the degree to
which Jewish religious identification tempered sectional differences.
Congregational leaders from the South as well as elsewhere in
the United States pledged to work together under the auspices of
committees formed in New York City. New York leaders had no
qualms about using Gershom Kursheedt of New Orleans as their
representative in Europe. In fact, Kursheedt was but one of the many
individuals crossing sectional lines via organizational, familial, and
business connections in a seamless pattern during their lives. Southern
Variations on the Mortara Case in Midnineteenth-Century New Orleans • 53
representatives actively participated in the first annual meeting of
the Board of Delegates of American Israelites in New York as late as
August 23, 1860.21 The fact that northern spokespeople supported the
Union and their southern counterparts becoming ardent Confederates
did not substantially impact the unity forged by adversity. In contrast
to the major Protestant denominations – Baptist, Methodist, and
Presbyterian – that split along sectional lines between the mid-1830s
and 1840s, on the eve of the Civil War, Jews formed their first truly
national organization, the Board of Delegates of American Israelites.
Some Jews, especially descendents of earlier immigrants, espoused Lost
Cause mythology in the decades after the war.22 Nonetheless, Gutheim
spent four years (1868-72) welcomed in a prestigious New York pulpit
before again returning to New Orleans. Southern congregations
rapidly joined the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (1873)
and supported Hebrew Union College (1875). Rabbis in the South
readily endorsed the Pittsburgh Platform (1885) and consequently
cooperated in forming first a regional and then a national body (the
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1889). Moreover, rabbis
in the South, as in the Midwest and West, recognized the affinity
of Reform with the needs of their congregants. But many were also
trained at the same institution and spent years in pulpits crossing
sectional lines. Communication and cooperation came naturally.
When in 1885 the Conference of Rabbis of Southern Congregations
adopted as its motto, “Union, peace and progress,” the members, many
of whom went on to distinguished careers in northern congregations,
expressed their desire to overcome religious division.23 But they used
language that smacked of the New South ideology of North/South
cooperation and reconciliation. These events occurred while the
Protestant denominations remained divided and actually increased
their competition for adherents in the South. Truly, Jewish history in
the South and throughout America reflected American history and
was impacted by it, but Jewish identity in its changing and numerous
manifestations should not be underrated as at least an equally
influential force.
Mark K. Bauman retired as a professor of history at Atlanta Metropolitan
College. He currently serves as editor of Southern Jewish History.
54 • American Jewish Archives Journal
Notes
Initial research for this article was undertaken while the author was the 1999-2000
Starkoff Fellow of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives.
The author greatly appreciates the support and gracious assistance provided by
Gary Zola, Kevin Proffitt, Camille Servizzi, and the staff of the Archives. Jonathan
Frankel, The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder,” Politics, and the Jews in 1840
(New York: 1997); Joseph Jacobs, “The Damascus Affair of 1840 and the Jews of
America,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society (1902): 119-28;
Jonathan D. Sarna, Jacksonian Jew: The Two Worlds of Mordecai Noah (NewYork:
Holmes and Meier, 1981), 61-75. For brief descriptions of the three incidents, see
Hasia Diner, A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 1820-1880 (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews in America: Four
Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
The Swiss Treaty remained an issue through the time of the Mortara case. Other
immediate concerns included the Jews’ Bill being debated in Parliament and similar
issues in North Carolina and New Hampshire, and the plight of Jews in Morocco.
The Board of Delegates of American Israelites addressed many of these causes. The
support of the latter for the petitions and protests of North Carolina Jews against
the religious disabilities in their state constitution on the eve of the Civil War
reflected cross-sectional unity. See The Occident and American Jewish Advocate,
September 1857-March 1860, (especially July 25, 1860, and August 9, 1860, for the
North Carolina issue).
1
On Leeser, attempts at union, conflicts within Philadelphia, the Mortara case, and
the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, see Lance J. Sussman, Isaac Leeser and
the Making of American Judaism (Detroit, MI.: Wayne State University Press, 1995),
211–19.
2
Bertram W. Korn, The American Reaction to the Mortara Case, 1858-59 (Cincinnati:
The American Jewish Archives, 1957); Max J. Kohler, “The Board of Delegates of
American Israelites, 1859-1878,” PAJHS (1925): 75-131; Allan Tarshish, “The Board
of Delegates of American Israelites (1859-1878),” PAJHS (1959): 16-32.
3
4
Korn, American Reaction, 79-80.
Contrary to Korn’s claim, the Charleston resolutions included a provision to
publish their protest resolutions in the local press. Although the New Orleans
committee did not see fit to publish its resolutions in the local press, the New
Orleans Times-Picayune’s editorial position reflected that of the local Jewish
committee. The paper noted the Philadelphia memorial to Buchanan and Cass’s
response on the front page. It described and decried the incident in no uncertain
terms. The newspaper also published an account of the annual meeting of the
Hebrew Widows and Orphans Association that included remarks from the keynote
speaker, attorney Eleazer Block. In part, Block said, “We appeal to you, our
Christian friends now present, to unite with us to secure an expression of popular
opinion throughout the Union, that, uniting with the loud-voiced remonstrances
of Europe, may point out to the tyrant the perils in his path, that may awaken
his dormant humanity, and induce him to restore to a mother her child.” The
account continued: “Loud and long applause accompanied the close of the address
that followed.” In Memphis, Tennessee, the resolutions approved by congregation
Children of Israel did urge the government to have American foreign ministers
5
Variations on the Mortara Case in Midnineteenth-Century New Orleans • 55
“lend their moral influence” on behalf of Mortara. These instances fail to support
Korn’s implication that southern Jews avoided publicizing their protests over the
Mortara incident within their local communities. The Israelite, December 24, 1858
(Charleston), January 29, 1859 (comments to Picayune editor at the annual meeting
of the Widows and Orphans Home Association), February 18, 1859 (Memphis);
Daily Picayune, December 7, 1858, January 11, 1859 (New Orleans).
Ibid., 43-46, 55-56, 92, 88-90, 93; Robert N. Rosen, The Jewish Confederates
(Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), Gutheim: 9, 244, 24950, 254-57, 363-64; Hyams: xi, 25, 28-29, 41, 143, 413 n. 226; Jonas: 88-90, 93,
148-53, 344-46, 356-58, 365-66. See also William Warren Rogers, Jr., “‘In Defense
of Our Sacred Cause’: Rabbi James K. Gutheim in Confederate Montgomery,”
Journal of Confederate History 7 (1991): 112-22. Gutheim, the society secretary,
offered the opening prayer at the Home’s dedication ceremony on January 8, 1856,
and Jonas gave the oration. Jonas remained involved fifty years later. New Orleans
banker George Jonas, Benjamin’s uncle and Abraham’s brother, served as the orphan
society’s second president. Montefiore was made an honorary member on January
18, 1856. Simpson, Gutheim, Joseph Manger, and Joseph H. Marks were forced to
resign offices in the society in 1863 because General N. P. Banks’s decree banished
them from New Orleans. As Manger explained, “The war between the States closed
in May, 1865, and the exiles returned to their home.” The Story of the Jewish Orphans
Home of New Orleans, Joseph Manger, compiler (New Orleans, 1905), 12-13, 23,
26, 38. This fiftieth anniversary publication, written by an early and long-time
member, does not mention either the Alice Levy or the Mortara incidents.
6
Korn, American Reaction, 12-13, 37-38. On Christian missions to the Jews and
Jewish responses, see Jonathan D. Sarna, “The American Jewish Response to
Nineteenth-Century Christian Missions,” Journal of American History 68 (June
1981); Lorman Ratner, “Conversion of the Jews and Pre-Civil War Reform,”
American Quarterly 13 (Spring 1961): 43-54; Robert M. Healey, “From Conversion
to Dialogue: Protestant American Mission to the Jews in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 18 (Summer 1981): 375-87.
7
In 1859 Kursheedt, a merchant then residing in London, was authorized by the
New York committee that had been organized to respond to the Mortara case
and, by proxy, many other American Jewish communities to accompany Sir Moses
Montefiore to the Vatican to meet with Pope Pius IX. Although the mission failed,
this illustrates the high regard the leaders of American Jewry had for Kursheedt.
Born in Richmond, Virginia, Kursheedt was the grandson of Gershom Mendes
Seixas of New York, the first American-born rabbi/hazan. He organized the New
Orleans Hebrew Benevolent Society and exerted strong influence over Judah Touro
on behalf of Judaism and Jewish philanthropy. Kursheedt, chair of the original
executive committee, declined the presidency of the Home because he was obligated
to carry out Judah Touro’s bequests in Jerusalem with Montefiore. See Korn,
American Reaction, 157; Manger, Story of the Jewish Home, 8. Charleston, South
Carolina, dedicated a Hebrew Orphans Home on January 8, 1860, in response
to the yellow fever epidemics in that city. See The Occident and American Jewish
Advocate, January 19, 1860. Similar orphans’ homes were later sponsored by B’nai
B’rith lodges on a district basis. The literature is extensive. See, for example, Gary
Edward Polster, Inside Looking Out: The Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum, 18681924 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990); Bradford Ward Trevathen,
8
56 • American Jewish Archives Journal
“The Hebrew Orphans’ Home of Atlanta, 1889-1930,” (honors thesis, Emory
University, 1984); Howard Goldstein, The Home on Gorham Street and the Voices of
its Children (Tuscaloosa, AL.: University of Alabama Press, 1996); Reena Sigman
Friedman, These Are Our Children (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England,
1994); Hyman Bogan, The Luckiest Orphans: A History of the Hebrew Orphan Society
of New York (Urbana, IL.: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Press, 1992).
The B’nai B’rith Seventh District Grand Lodge sponsored the New Orleans home
beginning in 1875. See Manger, Story of the Jewish Home, 34-35.
New Orleans Association for the Relief of Widows and Orphans, 1855-1939 annual
minutes, constitution, 1855, Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish
Archives, Box 35 (hereafter, citations will refer to “annual minutes,” “monthly
minutes,” and “semi-annual minutes”). All quotations will appear as they are in the
original without the use of “[sic].”
9
Annual minutes, constitution, 1855; Manger, Story of the Jewish Orphans Home, 5.
Yellow fever was an epidemic disease during the nineteenth century. In December
1858 The Occident and American Jewish Advocate reported one hundred Jewish
deaths in New Orleans during a ninety-day period. Isaac Leeser contrasted this
with one hundred and ninety-four deaths in his Cherry Street Congregation over a
twenty-one-year period. The New Orleans losses equaled half of those of this largest
Philadelphia synagogue over a dramatically different time period. Mobile created
a male Hebrew Relief Association on April 10, 1859 in response to the epidemics,
and the preacher and hazan, Dr. M. Mayer of Charleston’s Beth Elohim, resigned
because he claimed the trustees refused to grant him leave every summer to flee the
city during yellow fever season. They pleaded with him to remain, but to no avail.
See The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, June 23, 1859, September 15, 1859,
November 10, 1859, and November 18, 1859.
10
11
Annual minutes, bylaws, 1855.
Semiannual minutes, October 17, 1855; October 6, 1855; Manger, Story of the
Jewish Home, 15.
12
Simpson was elected president after the preliminary committee completed its
activities and continued in that capacity until his retirement from office on March
26, 1865. Semi-annual minutes, January 8, 1856; March 15, 1857; March 26,
1865. Vocational and, for women, “domestic” education remained hallmarks of
the institution. In 1904 the Isidore K. Newman Manual Training School opened
its doors under the auspices of the society. (Manger, Story of the Jewish Home, 37,
98-99).
13
Executive Board monthly minutes, December 26, 1858; Korn, American Reaction,
36-37, 39, 55-56.
14.
Executive Board monthly minutes, January 2, 1859; Korn, American Reaction,
62-63. Alice was one of forty-eight admitted into the home in the previous year and
one of forty-seven child inmates. There were only six widows. The Home always
housed only a very small number of widows, and in 1881 it decided to place these at
the Touro Infirmary. (Manger, Story of the Jewish Home, 19, 40-43).
15
Variations on the Mortara Case in Midnineteenth-Century New Orleans • 57
Having been unable to locate the grandmother’s letter, her role remains enigmatic.
Why did she seemingly support the maid’s position, and why did she not offer to
raise Alice?
16
Sir Moses Montefiore had an audience with Walewsky in Paris on his return trip
to England from Rome, in which he acknowledged the intervention of the French
government in the Mortara case. ( The Occident and American Jewish Advocate,
August 11, 1859.) Walewsky had sent the note to the Pontifical government through
the French ambassador to Rome at the behest of Napolean III protesting the
abduction of Mortara, and he also informed the Israelite Consistory of Paris of this
action. (The Israelite, November 19, 1859.) Walewsky is spelled “Wallewski” in
the newspapers.
17
Count Mèjan’s original letter in French was translated and reprinted in The
Occident and American Jewish Advocate, April 28, 1859, as part of Simpson’s annual
report to the association. I greatly appreciate the assistance of Helen McKinney
and Sonja Wentling for translating the document before I located the newspaper
account.
18
19
Korn, American Reaction, 13, 159.
A list of interments from August 1 to November 8, 1858 in the Jackson Street
Jewish Cemetery follows: The cause of the extensive deaths was yellow fever. Two
are listed as Levy, with France as the place of origin: Clarisse Levy, age twenty-five
and H. Levy, age twenty-two. Alice Levy’s mother died in September, so it is likely
that she would be included in this list. Because of the circumstances, it is unlikely
that the first name of the mother would be unknown. Therefore, probably Clarisse
Levy was Alice’s mother. On March 31, 1859, a correction appeared in The Occident
and American Jewish Advocate. The fault was placed on the nurse and not the women
to whom the baby had been taken. This notice also included information on another
similar incident. A bohemian immigrant named Bernhard had married a Christian
woman in St Louis. They had three sons before her death, and she requested that
they be raised as Jews, something she could not do during her lifetime because of
her Roman Catholic parents. Bernhard had great difficulty getting his children
back from a Roman Catholic asylum, where he had placed them temporarily. He
then fled to New Orleans because “St Louis was no longer a place of safety for
him.” The three boys underwent circumcision and conversion under the auspices of
congregation Temime Derech. Isaac M. Wise covered this story as a separate item in
The Israelite, January 29, 1859.
20
Simon Berman of Richmond, Virginia recommended the creation of agricultural
colonies in America to receive the persecuted from Europe in response to the
Mortara and similar incidents. Isaac Leeser and others championed the cause and
urged the Board of Delegates to establish a Hebrew Colonization Society. See
The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, September 8, 1859, October 6, 1859,
October 18, 1859, March 8, 1860, and August 23, 1860. In a front-page editorial on
January 17, 1861, Isaac Leeser advocated “conciliation and peace” and denounced
those in the North who denounced the South.
21
22
Rosen, Jewish Confederates, chaps. 8 and 9.
Gary P. Zola, “Southern Rabbis and the Founding of the First National
Association of Rabbis,” American Jewish History 85 (December 1997): 353-72.
23
58 • American Jewish Archives Journal